Confederate Veterans Buried at Family Cemeteries
Bowie, Duffy, Hardenman, Hunt-Andrews & Caney-Matthews
 

James Knox White

James Knox White was a native of Union District, South Carolina, having been born there in 1833. He was of Irish descent, his grandparents were born in Ireland. James was the second child of Daniel Jefferson White and Elizabeth McCullough.

James Knox White came to Texas with his parents in 1859, and settled at Clinton, DeWitt County. Some of the family were buried in the old Clinton Cemetery. James enlisted in the Confederate Army in September, 1861, and became a member of Company “E,” Terry’s Texas Rangers, a Cavalry arm of the service. He served in several campaigns and was promoted from Lieutenant to Captain. He was captured in 1863 at McMinnville, Tennessee, and taken as a prisoner to Johnson’s Island in the Ohio River. After two years, he was released and paroled at Victoria, Texas.

After the war, James Knox White settled in Matagorda County, and in 1870 he married a widow, Mrs. Elizabeth Sheppard Powell. She died two years later; they had no children.

In 1875, James married Laura Frances Bowie at the Caney home of her parents, George and Frances Sophia Bowie. Laura Frances, of Scottish descent, was born in Pleasant Hill, Alabama, in 1848. When she was two years of age, she came to Matagorda County, Texas, with her parents. Her father had purchased land in the Tone and Jamison League on Caney in 1848. James Knox and Laura Frances were the parents of four children; two died in infancy. The surviving two were James Bowie White, born in 1880, and Vasser White, born in 1882.

Captain White, as he was called, was a stockman and farmer and raised cotton, corn and cane. Their property was located on Caney, the 1984 location of the Albert Fay Ranch. They lived there until Laura Frances became ill. The land was sold and the family moved to Abilene where Laura Frances died in 1891. Her body was brought back to Matagorda County and buried in the Bowie Family Cemetery at what was then known as Bowieville. In 1885, James Knox White served in the Texas Legislature as Representative from the 66^th District. He was a tall man with dark brown hair and eyes; his wife was a tiny person with auburn hair and grey-green eyes.

James Bowie White attended The University of Texas and received a degree in Civil Engineering. He married Mary Cochran and they were the parents of four children. He worked for the Federal Government, and built several bridges across the Rio Grande River connecting Mexico and the United States.

After her mother’s death, Vassar White, at the age of nine returned to Matagorda County to live with her grandmother Bowie. She was privately tutored, and then attended Coronal Institute in San Marcos. She met her future husband, Norris Pier, in Austin County and they were married there in 1901.

The last five years of his life, Captain White suffered with what was then called rheumatism. He was paralyzed in his legs and confined to bed. He died in August of 1915 at the home of his daughter in Brookshire, Texas, and was buried beside his wife in the Bowie Cemetery.

Nantie Pier Lee, Historic Matagorda County, Volume II, page 557
 

Augustus Duffy
1838 - 23 December 1899
 

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